Its easier to get angry than to be sad. I have been dealing with the impending death of my co-worker/staff and good friend for most of the past year. At first avoidance of the emotional aspect was easy as I had to go through the hiring process to get an intern that we can train to take over her position.

When she called me in the spring to tell me, as I knew was coming, that her cancer had spread and was now medically confirmed as untreatable, we both sobbed into the phone (she lives in a small town in the BC interior). But being the strong, worldly women that we are the rest of our conversations on the subject have been rather matter-of-fact and taking-care-of-business.

Our first intern, hired in June, quit after three months. I guess he realized the job was opposite of glamourous! It was just surprising that it would take him that long to figure it out, I guess he just truly wanted to give it the old college try. I embarked on another round of job postings and interviews, and since September the new intern has been job-shadowing and doing his best to learn the intricacies of the lumber business. Which is very complicated and complex. Not glamourous, but quite fascinating to someone interested in that kind of thing.

During all this time my departing analyst and I have been very practical, discussing and preparing for her eventual exit realistically. Of course at times I have felt a pang, "I'm going to miss you SO MUCH." but not said anything because . . . well, I'm not the one whose dying, am I?? It is for me to be strong. If I want to weep to someone it won't be her. If anything it should be the other way around.

Hence this post.

Her frailty is increasing with every passing week, both physically and mentally. As the weeks go by I can see her mind fading, she fails at simple tasks like answering an unexpected phone call or remembering a change to the work schedule. It is becoming impossible to pretend that she won't be with us much longer.

As she prepares for the end of her life, she has moved from her remote acreage to an apartment in her town. Last week she messed up her internet connection, cancelling it too early and having to do her weekly job from a friend's house. By 7:30pm, only half-way through her editorial, she had to lie down on her friend's bed for a bit as the pain was intense and she had already taken her dose of daily meds.

On Saturday she moved into the new place but messed up, also, the phone service so is doing her market survey calls from her cel today. But she didn't call me until quite late yesterday evening to let me know, and I wasn't home because I have been sitting for a friend's cat while they are away.

This meant that our intern, the poor fellow, was vainly trying to get in touch with her since 7:30 this morning. He emailed me just before 9:00am saying he hadn't reached her.

My anger at this small hiccough far outweighed the oversight. For the better part of an hour I could not stop the rant from repeating in my head; my chastising her for not being organized enough to let us know early on Wednesday so I could have warned the intern to not bother trying to call in today.

Just now I realized its not that I am angry, I am incredibly sad. Its just easier to get mad, to rage, to use a small error as an excuse to blow off some emotion. Given that this type of reaction is usual in my dysfunctional family, I suppose I have learned by (bad) example and just continue the behaviour as a coping mechanism.

Its hard, its hard to face. The ending of a life is such a serious thing and when it is a person close to us we don't necessarily have the skill to handle it in a healthy way.

There are times when I am gripped by a feeling that can best be described as close to panic, "What am I going to do without her to talk to every week?!" and I want to explode in shrill wails. I have to hold it together though because her fate is inevitable and my losing it completely is not going to help anything.

Feeling bad is awful. I guess deflecting the real issue is a normal reaction to try to avoid the sadness. I know I am going to feel only worse about this as time goes by and her health deteriorates. Sometimes I feel stronger; I put my focus on getting the new person trained and on looking to the future, moving the company forward. But most of the time I am just filled with a terrible feeling of foreboding and impending loss. This gaping chasm is accompanied by a looming darkness in the pit of my stomach, the worst sense of dread. The last time when she went to hospital twice in the space of a week and half due to the pain it lasted most of a day. How is it going to feel when she goes into palliative care and then when she actually leaves us??

This is not a topic I normally write about, but having read the book and now seen the movie I feel compelled to make a post. Its only fair that there should be at least one review out there about the actual film rather than peoples' impressions of what they thought it was going to be, comparisons to Fear and Loathing, or assumptions based on who people think Johnny Depp is.

I heard the movie didn't do very well at the box office over its opening weekend, with hordes of journalists promptly declaring it a "flop", and a disaster for Johnny Depp. Tuesday night I dawdled idly to the evening showing, to find it SOLD OUT. Only one other movie at that cineplex was also sold out for that time, so I'm not sure how these preliminary assessments of the movie "tanking" are justified.

(and don't ask me how I got in to the sold out showing! I bought a ticket for another movie fully intending to see that instead, but as I had like 15 minutes before I needed to take my seat I thought I'd just poke my head in to The Rum Diary to see if there was a single seat with reasonably good sightlines available. There was, so I quickly took it! I wasn't the only one filtering in late with that idea, by the way.)

Rated R

I don't understand how the movie got an R rating, there's no boobs or anything, most of the sexuality is confined to steamy looks and comments made as an aside. The most graphic sex scene is viewed from a great distance through a telescope, and the important bits are under water. Salt water at that, which -- as a woman -- I can tell you doesn't work. But whatever, artistic license. Its a lovely shot, that's for sure. This film is way less raunchy than your average teen summer movie.

The Rum Diary movie departs from the book quite a bit, that is a fact. In the book, some of the less savoury characters are actually more disgusting and objectionable than they are in the movie. Certain elements of the book are played down, or not addressed at all, while other plot mechanisms mysteriously appear out of nowhere.

The logic behind the latter becomes clear further into the movie. Hunter S. Thompson was not writing about himself in the book. The story was loosely autobiographical, based on his experiences in Puerto Rico, but he created an alter-ego, Paul Kemp, and invented dramatic twists. In the movie, Depp specifically inserts characteristics and dialogue of his friend to make the character more Thompson-ish, if you will.

In effect the movie is both an extension of the book, and a brief summation of Thompson himself. Taken for what it is, without bringing preconceptions into an analysis, the movie actually works quite well.

A Work in its Own Right

As for the elements of the book that are left out of the film, well, that always happens, doesn't it? To some degree. In this case the most important ideas remain. The drifting, rootless girl, the finances of the newspaper, the culture of the times, and the impact of the American presence on the island.

This last bit is actually very tenderly addressed more than once. The disparity between the amenities available to the visiting tourists and the lifestyles of the locals are presented several times to quite striking effect. Depp emanates Thompson with expert skill, making references to how Puerto Ricans can't even use their own beaches, and against Nixon. In these instances Depp becomes more Thompson than Kemp.

The effect is to both demonstrate Thompson's personal struggles and difficulties with the island, and to provide a foreshadowing of the Thompson we came know through his writing. In a way the movie opens us to an early Thompson we might not have previously known, and closes the Thompson who later came to Gonzo fame.

Concluding Frame

The final clip of the movie, a still photo of the tanned and lean writer taking a stiff drink with a typewriter on his lap on the beach, is a very poignant conclusion. One gets the impression that Depp needed to make the movie almost more for himself, after the violent end to Thompson's life, than out of loyalty to his friend's memory.

I always read a book before going to see a movie, if only to be able to fill in obligatory gaps in the story. In this case I would suggest seeing the movie first, letting it stand on its own for what it is, then read the book later. They really are two separate, if connected, experiences.

Blackberry season is upon us finally here on the west coast of Canada. After a long winter, late spring, and cool wet seasons, summer arrived in Vancouver. Late. Very late.

I make blackberry jelly every year because . . . well because the berries are plentiful and free, frankly, and because they are delicious. There is nothing like cracking open a beautiful jar of homemade blackberry jelly in the depths of winter and letting the sunrise of that mid-summer flavour attack your palate.

I devoted my Labour Day long weekend to All Things Blackberry, choosing berries from bushes that ring an open park on the edge of the UBC Endowment Lands. A little cluster of homes informally known as 'Little Australia' (because all the streets are named after regions of that country) borders the City of Vancouver and the University of British Columbia. At the meadow here, once a year locals carrying pots, baskets, sieves or just plastic bags wade through the bramble for berries.

Usually I stick to the sunny side of the meadow but this year I found some really fine berries on the shady side as well. In the end I used half sunshine-berries (fat, ripe, full of sugar) and half shade-berries (leaner, ripe, more tart meaning containing more pectin).

I come equipped with my garden pruners to get the 'suckers', the branches with no berries but the sharpest, largest thorns, out of the way. Proceeding inside the blackberry bush I stomp down extraneous bramble to make a path until I locate bunches of ripe, sweet berries hiding in the protection of spiky thorns.

FRESH BLACKBERRIES, WASHED enough to fill my 10 litre pot!

BLACKBERRY BUSH SCRATCHES usually it isn't this bad. I fell right through the bramble, once you're hurt you may as well just keep going, right!?

Yeah I actually fell right through my precarious perch at one point, scratching my leg up good right to the thigh. Its not even the falling in that's the worst, its the getting out. Because the blackberry thorns are shaped like fish hooks; they get you more going out than coming in. Once I was hurt I figured, 'What the hell? May as well throw all caution to the wind.'

Its been such a weird season, starting out cool and wet then getting quite dry but not hot, I was worried whatever blackberries did materialize would be dried out little pathetic morsels. This was true in a lot of cases, especially under cover of trees. But a LOT of the high-hanging berries were absolutely gorgeous! It was in straining and reaching for these best-of-the-best that I got mangled. Usually I don't have to reach so far for berries so good.

third time BLACKBERRY STRAINING, through moistened cheescloth

I've tried different ways to speed up the straining process, you pretty much have to resign yourself to three days of effort (one day picking, one day cooking down and straining, one day actually making jelly) and to splashes of blackberry in the most remote corners of your kitchen.

I used to put the berries through a blender, let the seeds settle, then set up two strainers; one coarse, one fine. It doesn't matter which way you do it, it still takes a long time to separate the juice from the pulp. Just get the straining going and go outside to rub antiseptic on your arms and legs, hah.

BLACKBERRIES STRAINED pure juice in white pot at left, remnant pulp at right

Now things start to get interesting! That glistening pure black juice, still tart but a good indication of your final product, is destined to boil off for a few hours.

But jelly cannot be made of berries alone. There needs to be a stabilizer. A lot of people use pectin but I don't like that because you have to add more sugar and I like it as low-sugar as my tastebuds can tolerate. Pure blackberry all the way, baby!

If my quince tree gives me any fruit, which it seems to do every two years, then I use those. Otherwise I used the as unripe apples as I can find.

UNRIPE APPLES AS PECTIN at left while blackberry juice reduces at right

There's a house on the UBC lands with untended apple trees on the edge of the lot by the road. Every year there's a huge pile of apples on the ground, going to waste. If I don't have any quince, or not enough, I use these apples. I only take a few -- there's like five or six trees -- and I use everything I take. One year there were people sitting by the pool which quite surprised me because there's never anyone at this house. I called over the wee hill separating the house from the road, "Do you mind if I take a few of your apples??"

OK guy don't freak out, you're obviously not using them so what's the problem here?? I left on my bike and came back after dark.

This year there was nobody around but there was a car in the driveway so I scrambled up the little hill as quietly and quickly as I could, grabbed a bunch of green apples and got the hell out of there. Again there was a large pile of rotting apples on the ground. I'll admit I took some ripe red apples as well. They were warm to my touch with the late afternoon sun from the west beaming down on them and they smelled FANTASTIC.

I might go back next week, we'll see. If those apples are just going to go to waste because some old guy doesn't want to share then I might just help myself again. If they're being harvested I'll leave it alone.

APPLES STRAINED AND COOKING

The trick to getting the pectin to work using this method is to cook down the apples, or quince, FIRST. Don't add the apples to the blackberry juice and think it will jell.

And yes, you have to strain the apples as well of course, not just the blackberries.

meanwhile STERILIZE JARS

Place clean Mason jars and lids in the sink. Pour rapidly boiling water to the top of each jar (I like to see the water pouring over the top so I know both the inside and outside of the top of the jar is sterilized) and the lids. If you run out of water don't partly fill a jar then fill it later with more boiling water. It has to be fully boiling water to the very top of each jar.

Let sit for one minute.

Not touching the top of the jars or lids, use something heat-resistant to grab the jars from the bottom and pour out the water. Place on counter somewhere safe where nothing will come in contact with the jar openings or the lids until you put the hot jelly inside. It doesn't matter if the jars cool down, just make sure nothing touches the tops in the meantime.

STRAIN COMBINED APPLES AND BLACKBERRIES one more time because the whole process isn't enough of a pain in the butt

Yeah I had to strain the combine apples and blackberries one more time. That's five times straining in total for anyone whose counting. These apples I should have peeled I realized later.

BLACKBERRY JELLY sealed up tight in jars for a dark winter day's treat

When pouring or spooning the jelly mixture into your jars be sure to not let any drip on the top of the opening or it will interfere with the seal. This may allow bacteria to grow that you can't smell or taste and can make you really sick or die.

I had gotten into the beer by this point (well, after like four straight hours of dicking around with this what do you think is going to happen!!) so my aim wasn't so good and I actually did get some drips on the jar tops. Very quickly boil more water and pour small amounts just to wash the lid area off. Make sure there is no material on any of the threads of the jar.

Enough blackberries to fill a 10 litre pot came out to about 4 litres cooked down and strained, combined with a bunch of apples, in the end makes these three regular-sized Mason jars of blackberry jelly. Usually I go through the whole process one more time but I don't know if I will this year. This jelly is going to be super-good, judging from how it tasted hot, and I have already picked the best of the blackberries that were available. Of course its true that more will ripen over time but it didn't look like there was going to be a bumper crop or anything. I want to leave some for other people to enjoy!

You know your jelly worked and won't kill you with unseen bacteria when the jars *pop*. Between half and hour to an hour after you pour the jelly into the jars and seal them up tight you should hear each one pop. That means the vacuum seal worked.

My jars popped nicely one at a time. By then it was off to bed and I slept pretty good, I bet I was dreaming about enjoying that bright, undiluted berry flavour during the winter months.

Leave jars undisturbed for 24 hours. I usually put them in the fridge after that, there's enough room in my fridge to keep the jars there until I open them but you don't have to do that as long as your lids have popped. It might take up to a week for the jelly to set up, so don't panic if its still running inside the jars the next day.

If your jelly doesn't set you have blackberry syrup which is just as good really, except you can't spread it on toast, but apart from that its the exact same flavour as jelly.

This past weekend was the grand opening of the new Olympic Plaza Whistler with a free show by Kathleen Edwards and Sam Roberts Band at the outdoor venue. Free show outside at Whister, BC? On a Saturday! Just try to keep me away, haha.

None of my friends could or wanted to go, and I wasn't able to suss out a place to stay on such short notice (the show was only announced on Monday, at least to my Vancouver-bound knowledge) so I rented a car and went up just for the day.

Packed a wee lunch, scooted past Nestor's because there was some kind of street fair happening, parked like a kilometre away from the Upper Village (because I am NOT paying for a whole day's parking at Whistler) and set out for the liquor store. Bought two beers and found out where the venue was exactly.

"The show tonight?!" the guy behind the counter exclaimed. "Its right there! See those stairs beside the Post Office? Up there!"

Could Not Be Easier.

"See you at 9:05 when I'm off," he called after me. Sure thing, Joe!

Up the stairs I checked out the venue, scoped out the sightlines and where I would probably want to stand later. There was a few people already basking in the sun on blankets but that always happens. Its a pretty big, wide-open grassy space surrounded by a concrete plaza. Tons of room.

My beers nestled in the cooling comfort of my freezer packs, I hoofed it back up the hill and headed down the Lost Lake trail. I had a nice lunch and acquired a good beer buzz among the families at the beach and teenagers goofing around on the raft.

View from my lunch spot, not bad at all!

Back to the car to drop off the lunch stuff and load up my water bottle with a bit of vodka. Meandered down the hill in the afternoon heat feeling very relaxed.

Once again at the venue I decided to hang back. There was a ton of kids about and I figured there would be a massive shift after the opening act, Kathleen Edwards -- who usually plays acoustic guitar -- when it was getting dark and the parents would take their kiddies home.

The Olympic Plaza Whistler before the sun passed behind the mountains:

There was a bunch of speeches first, some by Olympic athletes, others by politicians, all roundly ignored. Sorry, I like to respect our Canadian athletes but not when I'm expecting a show! Just get on with the music already, thanks. I must admit the wee bit of pyro and horizontal fireworks were pretty cool.

Kathleen Edwards played well and sounded good but had a real challenge with the disinterested crowd. Do Whistler people never go to concerts, or are they all just so freaking cool that they don't enjoy shows?? This isn't a podcast in your living room people, show some enthusiasm!

She chided the crowd gently for their apathy then told a story about when she was opening for Willie Nelson and it was kind of the same thing; people just sat there waiting for the headliner to come on. Let's just say the story involved some yahoo yelling, "Show us your t*ts!", a seeming requirement when a woman takes the stage at a rock show, and leave it at that.

Given that the festivities started an hour late and there was a bunch of unscheduled speeches, I figured I had a good 20 minutes for set change before the Sam Roberts Band would come on. Quickly I found an establishment that served beer and ordered one.

"Just one," I thought to myself, "because you're driving the Sea to Sky Highway back to Vancouver later."

Well, because life is never that simple I was soon befriended by a Brit fellow and his girlfriend. Announcing, "You're all right!!" he bought me a whiskey which, being Canadian, I couldn't very well refuse. While all this was going on I heard the strum of guitar, downed my beer, pointed to my new friends where I would be on the grass, and delicately navigated my way in the dark.

As I had hoped/expected, once past the crowds encircling the field there was actually lots of room. I picked my way carefully through the blanket-sitters -- and laying-downers! I am NOT kidding, lying down wrapped in a blanket. What the freaking hell are you even doing there? -- to pretty much exactly the spot I had picked out in daylight.

The show was really good, the sound was great, Sam worked hard to get the crowd excited but was mostly confronted with hushed awe from the younger crowd, and practiced indifference from the more senior. OK its not the Dead, I get it! And the 60's are over, we know. But its still good. Honestly.

The level of popularity the Sam Roberts Band now enjoys usually means a crushing crowd close to the stage, so I end up farther back where there is room to move around and I can see. This time I really enjoyed having several metres of room around me to dance about, while still being close enough to see the actual performers rather than just the screen.

Alas, all good things eventually end. It seemed to me that the show was shorter than was advertised. But hey, when something is free you get what you get! I went away happy. Stopped to get some water and a strong tea, and proceeded on the 20 minute hike to the car.

The next day I found the setlist posted on Sam Roberts Band official Twitter and we did indeed miss one song for the encore and we totally missed the 10 minutes of atmospheric jam they often do at the end. So that's a shame.

The real pity is that most of the Whistler people probably don't even know they missed out, and probably wouldn't even care. Oh well, it was a really fun night for me.

There's a bunch of good photos of the show at this guy's photostream on Flickr:

This past weekend saw the annual Khatsahlano Festival along West 4th Ave in Vancouver's Kitsilano neighbourhood. The entire street, a wide avenue, was closed as merchants and others set up booths displaying their services and wares.

That's all very nice, especially when they give away free stuff, but I was there for the music! Checking line-up postings that seemed to appear all at once suddenly on Friday (no more early announcements for outdoor fun events after the Stanley Cup fiasco downtown a couple of months ago?) I noticed several bands worth seeing would be playing later in the day.

I planned my arrival early enough so I could cruise down the entire strip, which ran from Macdonald to Burrard streets, and check out each of the five stages' lineups. By mid-afternoon I decided to see Aidan Knight on the Peak.fm stage at 4:00 and Yukon Blonde on the CITY TV stage at 5:00. If not for Yukon Blonde I would have stayed at the Peak stage for Jon & Roy, but alas do not have the ability to occupy two places at once. Such is the way with festivals, difficult decisions must be made!

Walking back up 4th to the Peak stage, which was outside the Safeway, I saw Narduwar, resident Vancouver weirdo and former CITR DJ -- now MuchMusic personality, if he's still doing that I'm not sure -- anyway he sings for the long-lived Evaporators and was mugging for a rather nice camera with some dude in sunglasses. I imitated them from behind the photographer's back which prompted a group of kids standing around snacking to pronounce Narduwar's trademark, "Do do da do do, DO DO". Laughs all around.

The front of the Peak stage was taken by kids sitting. A bit surreal when you think about it, basking in the sun on the hot pavement in the middle of what is usually a very busy intersection. I picked a spot just behind the sitters, in front of centre stage. More crowds quickly formed behind me.

SETTING UP FOR THE BAND

Aidan Knight was awesome and the sound was great. There were some changes, at first his band, I think he said they were called the Furious Friends, played with him then he did a couple of songs solo. After that the band came back on stage with a big surprise, the members of Said the Whale!

*the crowd goes wild*

"AIDAN KNIGHT AND THE FURIOUS FRIENDS" WITH "SAID THE WHALE"

After rocking the house, I mean street, Knight invited everyone to stand. (why do they need an invitation?? come on man, there's music playing, let's boogie!!)

Things start getting bouncy with the music and people happily get to their feet to jump around.

At this point there are so many people on stage its hard to keep track. Knight's . .. bass player? second guitar player?? I forget, but he's tall they call him the CN Tower, he came back from sitting in for someone else, plus another girl joined the festivities to play percussion.

HOW MANY PEOPLE FIT ON ONE LITTLE STAGE, ANYWAY??

Some of the extra people cleared off the stage for the last song, Knight's wildly popular radio hit "Jasper".

ROCKIN' GOOD TIMES

The band finished right on time for which I was thankful because I had about 10 minutes to swim through the crowd way back down 4th to the CITY TV stage for Yukon Blonde. I didn't take any pictures of that just because I already felt pretty geek-a-fied and because the crowd was more active so photo opportunities were difficult. Tall heads looming in front of me and all that.

Yukon Blonde was great and actually also had a couple of extra people join them on stage for a song or two. Sorry I missed the names but the added joyousness of the new participants sure was fun to watch.

What a great day, its wonderful to see a musical community growing again in this town. Back in my day (yes I am old) there were several venues where we could see two or three up-and-coming bands for $5. With those venues gone, ticket prices skyrocketing, and the unfortunate popularity of 'house' music (I don't care what you call it, its disco by another name, sorry) there has been a glut of good, fun live music in Vancouver for far too long.

I saw on Twitter someone said David Bowie was standing on the balcony of the Indian Oven taking in the sights, I'd love to know if that's really true. Anyone who knows for sure, leave a comment!

In 1994, when Vancouver was up against the New York Rangers in the final round of the Stanley Cup, I was a tender young 25 year old. Newly single, having been dumped by a boyfriend I thought I would marry, looking for solace and a regular stream of company to take my mind off my disintegrated life, I fell deep into a younger group of friends.

It was someone's stupid idea to watch the game at an apartment at the bottom of Robson Street. It was someone else's stupid idea to make our way up Robson and through the West End before heading home to Kitsilano. My friend and I each took a bottle of beer and proceeded up the big hill toward Burrard. Most people were celebrating but there were some boneheads out there. As we got close to the intersection of Robson and Burrard the crowds got thicker and the mood turned uglier.

A short, overweight, middle-aged police officer approached me and told me he would have to confiscate my beer bottle because I could "use it as a projectile". Already quite put off by the raucous mood of the crowd, I immediately engaged him in debate, "You mean you want my beer because its illegal to drink out here, right??"

Drinking in public is not allowed in Canada except in Quebec. For special occasions like Canada Day there might be a roped-off area for drinkers but usually we Canadians are very good at disguising our liquor to look like harmless soda. People buy stickers and metal wrappers at discount stores, "Cake", and "Pipsi" are two popular ones.

Beerless and generally unimpressed with the crowd we kept walking along Robson. A young fellow traversing the bus trolley wires above the intersection elicited both encouragement and hoots of derision. Other boys were climbing the streetlights and whatever else they could find. Later we found out that a second boy tried to highwire on the trolley cable but fell to the pavement. The ambulance had a really hard time getting through the uncooperative crowd and he ended up being quite hurt.

At this point my STUPID friend decided she was hungry and wanted a hamburger. I wasn't even really interested in sticking around that zone and tried to dissuade her but at that age friends stick together no matter how ridiculous the situation so I went along.

In the 15 minutes, or less, it took her to get her greasy fast-food burger from an outlet a few blocks away, the police had climbed up on the roofs of Robson and were issuing a dispersal warning. "Go home, in 10 minutes we're releasing the tear gas."

Unaware of the escalating situation, we headed back up to Robson, on Howe St. The cars were at a standstill and we high-fived passengers and drivers through their open windows the whole way up. That was awesome. We got to Robson and turned in the intersection toward Burrard.

A couple of things were different. As I focussed on computing the situation my friend went back into celebration mode. The first thing I noticed was that the crowd was all boys. And the mood was completely different. We strolled along slowly only for a minute or two when suddenly all the people in front of us turned around, were now facing us, and their eyes were wide open X1000.

Woah.

My friend and I stopped short. What . . . what the hell??

The crowd started moving toward us quickly, my friend spun around to also start running but I grabbed her.

Keta does not flock, or herd.

"To the side!" I yelled in her ear and dragged her to the sidewalk. We stood up against the wall like runaways caught in headlights. The sidewalk was packed with other confused bystanders, and not a few store owners out specifically to protect the windows of their individual shops.

Before our eyes the entire street cleared. A wafting puff of smoke followed. You can't get away from that stuff. Wrapping your T-shirt around your face does not stop the tear gas from getting into your throat, your eyes, stinging, burning, making your eyes water and you can't talk properly.

Then, as my friend and I realized we must have missed something important while she was stuffing her face with greasy fast food, the crowd came back. And they were mad. And they had no shirts on suddenly. Why do boys take off their shirts when they are about to commit mayhem?? So weird.

As my friend and I were trying to stuff our shirt sleeves into our faces and were discussing in which direction to best make our escape, the crowd marched back up Robson toward Burrard as one.

"Let's go SHOPpin'!" I heard one shout.

A boy came up beside me to kick the store window, trying to find the fireman's corner. The owner shouted and pushed him away roughly, "Oh no you don't!"

The kid just shrugged and moved to the next window. My friend and I sidled down Robson away from Burrard as best we could given the now total mayhem that was ensuing. Half-way down the block there's a wee space between the buildings, we dashed down it and into the lane. Remarkably the air here was completely clear. We allowed our tearing eyes to wash the gas out.

As we walked down the lane asking each other "what just happened there??" we could see evidence of hundreds, if not thousands, of people having taken that same escape route before use. Everything was trampled but now the back alley was eerily quiet.

I stopped as I realized we were heading toward Burrard. A bit further along was a gap between the buildings which normally had an 11 foot fence between, anchored to the buildings. This chain-link fence was absolutely flattened. Glad to avoid the violent intersection my friend and I stepped onto the fence toward Haro. We were remarking to each other how completely the fence was brought down, surely by the force of hundreds of bodies moving quickly.

Just then the building manager came out to have a look, said something nondescript to us then saw the fence and shouted, "Look what you did to my fence!"

I sighed, about to launch into a big explanation of what had just gone down when my friend, who until then proved herself remarkably slow to respond to the quickly-changing situation, spun around, pointed to herself and me and shouted back,

"Yeah. Me and HER did that!" and scoffed.

We walked away to the sounds of the building manager ranting about her fence, the crushed plants and flower, and 'stupid kids'.

Last night the mayhem was even worse. We're talking a whole new generation now. The looting and anarchy was the same, but last time there were no fires set. And the sheer ignorance . . . people jumping up and down on top of a burning car?? hello?! Seriously lacking in brain cells.

This morning large numbers of regular Vancouver citizens are downtown helping with the cleanup, prompted by a viral campaign started on Facebook. Police and media last night already issued requests for any photo and video evidence of people vandalizing. In 1994 the police had great success capturing almost all the perpetrators through the summer using only media images and security cams. Now there is way more footage available.

The police will patrol the Skytrain over this summer armed with photos of the hooligans. As the months pass they will get a large proportion of them.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick. [ . . . ]"

In the universe of creativity, there is alsway a battle before an idea can be expressed.

A delicious morsel, a bare tendrilsuggestionof a thought.Which must be handled delicatelycautiously, tenderly.The circumstances must be just rightthe spacethe lightthe noiseto allow this germ, this kernelof an idea to take rootand grow, developflourish.An interruption, distractiona diversion of attentionand that inspiration, that singularityis gonelike a cloud dispersed in the blowing windor a puff of smoke dispelled into the surrounding air.

The process is excruciating; trying to maintain oneself open to the vagaries of inspiration, preventing the mundane requirements of life from rising up at an inopportune time, learning how to process the idea into something that others can experience. Art, writing, music . . .. it doesn't matte the challenges are the same.

Once the difficulty is overcome, the expression is accomplished, the creativity goes from a vague idea lingering in the being to a form that can be viewed or heard by others. It is very satisfying, there is a great sense of achievement, in sharing that work.

Why must it end there?

Why is that work, the result of sheer toil, discipline, creative agony, then taken away from the producer? A system has been constructed in which legions of other people become involved in the distribution, dissemination, presentation, of that idea.

Generally the last person who has any say at all in how that idea reaches people is the one who made it. No wonder artists go crazy, become bitter, disengage from society.

They are put at the back of the line, treated like dependent children, told their work is done

they don't know anything about the business sidedon't worry about itwe'll take care of it for you

Then when experiencing their own creation along with everyone else they find it has been

altereddilutedtransformed

so the eventual result does not come across in the way of the initial vision.

Satisfied feelings of accomplishment evaporate, to be replaced b a sense of having been used. A sense of being disposable, interchangeable with other products of creative expression.

A pretense of misunderstanding is offered by those who distribute, disseminate, present art while money is passed around, some of it eventually landing on the creator.

"Next time we'll get it right!"

they chime in unison as cash registers ring and bank accounts swell.

But now the creator doesn't know if they will again be visited by inspiration so clear, so pure, so unique. Going back to again generate that necessary atmosphere of

spacelightnoise

become more difficult with each disappointment.

"She's lost it."

the secondaries mutter among themselves as the work begins to degrade, becomes derivative of itself, colluding in unspoken understanding to never acknowledge that it is THEY it is the system in which THEY operate that slowly kills off the creativity, chokes off the inspiration.

A search begins for the next creator. There's always more, isn't there?? There has never been an end to it before!

That doesn't mean there won't be. It just means no one has seen it happen.

My first real vacation in three years, an actual break without worrying about coming back to a huge pile of work that piled up while I was gone, was for almost three weeks at the end of 2010. Christmas in London and New Year's in Prague . . . sounds pretty great! I was staying with family; my cousin and her two boys live in central London, and my parents have an apartment in downtown Prague. My parents came from Prague for Christmas week then I returned with them for a week in the town of my birth.

I've been back to Prague since Czech regained its freedom from the Soviets, but always in summer. And for extended periods both times. Before I left I decided that this trip will not be about photography. I've already done that (although with Prague you can never get enough, seriously) and I was there for such a short time I preferred to just immerse in the experience rather than document it for others to see.

Right off the trip hit a glitch: my British Airways flight out of Vancouver was one of the first to get cancelled due to snow at Heathrow. A three day delay, much news watching, Twitter reading, and nail biting later, my rebooked flight on Air Canada actually made it out of Vancouver. At YVR I noticed on the board that the BA flight for that day was also cancelled. What a mess.

So I got to London three days late, having missed a theatre evening (I was supposed to see Ibsen's "The Master Builder") but otherwise none the worse for wear. Christmas Eve was fast approaching. The first two days were basically about adjusting to the time change, and my cousin and her kids finishing the last day at school/work before their holiday started. We went for dinner, my cousin and I, with a couple of friends of hers to a fusion, sort of Indian but not really, restaurant close to Covent Garden shopping district. I started not feeling well during dinner, put that down to the spicy food and wine and my continued jet lag.

But no. I caught an unpleasant stomach bug I guess on the plane, and was down for two days first evacuating my system then resting up from that. By then it was Christmas Eve. Little did we know I had managed to infect the rest of my family, but not all at the same time they proceeded to get sick one after the other but always two days apart so the whole thing lasted to New Year's Eve. After present opening and Christmas Eve dinner the older boy got sick to his stomach and we had to leave immediately. At least the celebration part was over.

Christmas Day is not ceremonial in Czech, but my cousin is raising her kids as both Czech and British so we had a goose, actually two, with sauerkraut and dumplings, very traditional. And delicious. Too bad I couldn't eat huge amounts as I usually do, my stomach was still tender. Oh well, that's what leftovers are for!

The family requirements for the Christmas season behind us, my cousin, her kids and I tooled around London a bit. We still had another family meal, a wonderful stewed beef roast that is marinated for three days, called sauerbraten in German and svitckova in Czech, to get through. But otherwise we could relax.

We went for a walk along the Thames, where the boys searched for old pipes from the last century and I actually found a little bag full of bath luxuries from Sanctuary Spa. I guess the river spit up a special orange Christmas present for me! The weather was improving but still chilly. Another day we walked through old London town to a different part of the Thames.

My cousin lives in the Kennington district, which is quite central.

We all went to a play at the National Theatre, which is walking distance from my cousin's house. Called "Season's Greetings" it was billed as 'fun for the whole family', which it was, but at £38 I thought it was a bit uninspired. No matter, I spent so little money on the trip, between staying with family and cooking our own food. I'm not going to complain about that cost.

I managed to get a day with a Canadian friend of mine who has since returned to her family's home of London. We went back to Covent Garden, and walked around Leister Square, hitting a few of the regular sites, before she had to get back on the train to Epsom.

One evening we went to the Winter Wonderland amusement park at Hyde Park (or 'Fun Fair' as they call it in England). By then the younger boy had caught my tenacious stomach virus, or else just the regular flu, and couldn't go with us to see the fair or any of the rides. Poor thing.

And so the week passed, fast as lightening! It was time to go to Prague. I would have another day to spend with my cousin on the way back, but for now the thought of returning to the city of my birth for New Year's was all I could think about.

In this world I think we complain about things that make no sense. It's good that we develop, and make progress, but once we've gotten somewhere I think people focus on things unimportant, people get easily distracted.

When life was more difficult, still is in many parts of the world, we tended to keep our mind on the immediate, on things that mattered more. In a certain sense of that word.

Now all those good, earthly, pursuits are seen as trite, too simple, a waste of time. Why stitch or grow food when you can just buy whatever you want? Personal expression fades away. Everyone owns a version of what others have. Evenings are spent plugged into electronics. Very not calming to the soul, highly individualized activities.

Even listening to music, historically something for which people gathered together, has become a solitary experience. Sanitized.

When people do gather together for a musical experience it is often so fraught with technology as to have lost its humanity. No throbbing tribal rhythms, no lilting chorus. Just a pumping beat with dull chanting, almost entirely lacking in melody. Each piece blends into the next in one seamless, droning litany. Bodies grind and flail in prescribed motions. There is no spontaneity, no individual expression in the movement.

"Everyone raise your arms in the air!" The crowd complies dutifully. No one finds that strange.

Senses are often dulled by drugs, meant to enhance but in reality detract.

They don't know any better.

As we pass through our lives with our technology, our comfort, our conveniences, we become detached from this solid earth. Feet feel more at home on concrete than on dirt or rock, heads sheltered from the elements.

We dash from our homes to our cars to offices and shops. We create shields around ourselves to minimize contact with other humans until we can get back to the zones which we control.

Of the moon we take no notice. The stars we can't even see from the city. The sun, the clouds, the rain, the wind, we ignore or avoid outright. We build bridges over water, concrete towers with shaded windows in which to spend our days, metal boxes to get around in.

Electronic trinkets to keep in touch with each other, a pale pretense of maintaining some sense of human consciousness.

Of this earth we are, not of machines and wires and electric charges. Dirt from the ground is not bad for us. Existing separate from the seething mass of humanity rapidly taking over this globe is.